MSI MPower Max review

PERFORMANCE
With our Intel Core i5-4670K running at its stock speed of 3.4GHz, our test PC completed our multimedia benchmarks with an overall score of 113. This score matches that of the Asus Z87-Pro and beats the Gigabyte Z87X-OC by one point.

If you’d like to apply an automatic overclock, you can press the motherboard’s OC Genie button. You can press it at any time, and when the computer next restarts the Z87 MPower will apply an overclock based on your setup. OC Genie increased the clock speed of our processor to 4.2GHz and increased our memory’s speed to 1,600MHz. At these speeds, our test PC scored 127 overall, and a whopping 137 in the multitasking segment. That’s a healthy increase in performance for no effort at all, and it beats the Asus RoG Maximus Gene VI’s overall score of 125 overall with a 4.2GHz overclock.

As you’d expect from a motherboard such as the Z87 MPower Max, there are plenty of onboard buttons of which the OC Genie button is just one. Next to it is a Power button, along with a Reset button and plus and minus buttons that increase or decrease the base clock by 1MHz. There’s also a Clear CMOS button no the rear connection panel. The buttons are well illuminated and easy to spot, but they’re located right next to the third PCI Express x16 slot, and will be obscured if you install a dual-slot card in it.

The Z87 MPower Max’s UEFI BIOS is fairly well organised, but the mouse feels a little redundant. We prefer Asus’s UEFI BIOS, but we do appreciate the traditional list-style organisation of the Z87 MPower Max’s BIOS. You get access to voltage and frequency settings for your processor, memory and on-chip graphics processor, so there’s much scope for tinkering.

CONCLUSION

We like the MSI Z87 MPower Max, and it’s pretty well priced. The Z87 MPower Max costs more than the Asus RoG Maximus Gene VI, but it provides more expansion slots and display outputs. However, the Maximus VI Gene is more compact. Both are great boards, but we prefer the MSI Z87 MPower Max because its extra size allows greater opportunities for expansion and it allows higher memory capacities, even though it costs more.